


We Don't Need Roads

by Machiavelien



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Back to the Future References, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, House Party, Matchmaker Peter, Time Travel, Young Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21805645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Machiavelien/pseuds/Machiavelien
Summary: After travelling back in time, Spider-Man finds himself stuck in 1995 and turns to a young Tony Stark on his search to get... BACK TO THE FUTURE! But not before he makes sure his parents still meet and fall in love.
Relationships: Mary Parker/Richard Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 198





	We Don't Need Roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/gifts).



> Thank you for your enthusiasm and support that inspired me to follow through with this AU!  
> Aka just an excuse for me to make some 90's jokes... I played with the anon's prompt pretty loosely, hope y'all enjoy!

Everything is dirtier and grimier than Peter had expected. Not that New York in the twenty first century is much better, but there's so much more graffiti and garbage all over the city in 1995—on top of the pervasive cigarette smoke on every corner and even indoors.

Peter swings higher off the ground than he normally would for patrols just to avoid the overwhelming smells, even though that makes it harder for him to keep an eye on the streets. But he's not on patrol anyway; in fact, he's supposed to keep a low profile until Tony's done fixing the Audi-lorean—the R8 model that Peter had retrofitted into a time traveling vehicle.

 _Young_ Tony, Peter reminds himself. _A_ Tony. Not the Tony he knew. Dr. Banner had warned him about this part of time travel—encountering people he knew, but not really, and trying to interact with them as if he did. 

Hot on the trail of Dr. Doom’s latest time-hopping scheme, Spider-Man had traveled back to 1995 to destroy a set of notes that the villain had left behind for his future self. Peter didn't usually take on missions so far outside of Spidey's neighborhood, but he needed to get away and forget that miserable night, erase the look on MJ's face from his mind. 

After destroying the notes and thwarting Doom’s plans, Peter found himself stuck in the past when the Audi-lorean got damaged in the fight, leaving him stranded with no way to travel back to the future or communicate with his present time. 

After fiddling under the hood, Peter realized that he couldn't fix the car without a new palladium core or changing the physics of time travel. So he turned to the only one person—in _this_ time—that could possibly help him.

It didn't take Peter too long to track down the Tony of this timeline. After the twenty-five year old CEO of Stark Industries left the filming of some talk show interview, Peter followed him to a two hour lunch at Le Cirque, after which young Tony exited into a black town car with his two supermodel dates, then back to Stark Tower for some meetings, until he disappeared into his lab, alone.

In this pre-superhero world, no one seems to be in the habit of looking up and keeping an eye out for any Avengers, supervillains, or a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swinging across the skies, which at least made that part of Peter's mission easier. Tony was too busy to notice the red and blue figure tailing him all afternoon, allowing Peter to easily slip into his lab undetected.

Knowing that Tony's parents had died just four years ago, Peter was prepared to contend with a younger, more immature and selfish version of his mentor. Having recently inherited his father's company, Tony was just embarking on the playboy lifestyle he'd later be known for, and Stark Industries was still the chief weapons manufacturer for the U.S. military.

Meaning everything about this Tony and his life was making it _extra_ difficult for Peter to convince Tony to help him get home. 

The initial conversation went about as well—or poorly—as Peter had expected it to go. After the initial shock, disbelief, threats, and sly questions about his own future, Tony finally accepted Peter's exasperated explanations and proof ("Look at it, Tony! It's a fucking time traveling car! Look at my suit, the Stark tech? Plus, I can lift the car and throw it across town!"), and settled down to solve the problem.

Peter suspects that Tony only came around when he told him that he, Tony Stark, was the one who figures out how to make time travel possible.

"Alright, fine, that checks out," nodded young Tony, inspecting the Audi-lorean's burnt-out core, "that future-me builds the first time machine ever."

“How long will it take to fix it?” asked Peter, pacing the familiar but also not-familiar lab. 

“Oh, I dunno," said Tony, sitting up on his haunches. "How long does it usually take to reverse-engineer a time travelling sports vehicle from thirty years into the future, with technology that doesn't exist yet?”

“For a regular person, or Tony Stark?” Peter raised both eyebrows and tilted his head at Tony.

“Oh, you’re good," Young Tony chuckled ruefully, shaking a finger at Peter. "Gotta give it to you kid, maybe you really do know me afterall.”

Tony kicks Peter out of his lab after a few hours, telling him that he's making him anxious with all of his hovering and off-tune humming to the speakers blasting Led Zeppelin—or was it AC/DC? Peter thinks Tony just wants some time alone to absorb all the information he's just been bombarded with over the last twenty-four hours, but he isn't ready to drop the blithe and snarky persona around Peter—or anyone—just yet. 

On some level, Peter feels older and more mature than this Tony, even though he is still technically younger, even in this timeline. Maybe it's just everything he's gone through up to this point, but he's sure that knowing the man that Tony will become someday adds to the feeling.

So Peter cuts young Tony some slack and tells him he'll just do an incognito swing around the city until midnight.

"Here, take this with you." Tony throws a small rectangular gadget at Peter, who catches it with one hand. "Be careful with that—state of the art tech in your hands right there. It'll let us communicate—"

"A cell phone? Cool," says Peter, inspecting the blocky black device with a green screen. "Is this one of those Nokia bricks? I've seen the memes but never actually a real one! It's so heavy. Does it do the ring?"

Tony gives him a look of confusion and disgust. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, dun-da-dun da dun—"

"Ah, you can put a lid on that now," Tony interrupts, clamping a hand on Peter's mouth while he's mimicking the midi ringtones.

When Peter is on his way out of the lab, Tony pauses his soldering and calls out to him. "Just tell me one thing about the future— _my_ future. Do I make Stark Industries better than my father did? Bigger, more profitable?"

"You privatize world peace, Tony," Peter says wryly, tugging his mask back on.

"Okay, fine, don't tell me," Tony sniffs, waving him away. "Don't need to be so sarcastic and snippy about it."

-*-

Peter just needs something to do to pass the time while Tony fixes the Audi-lorean, preferably something that won't drastically alter the course of this timeline. But his favorite haunts either don't exist yet, or are completely different—Delmar's deli was still a self-service coin laundromat, and strangers were living in his and Aunt May’s apartment.

So, Peter finds himself wandering along the streets of Flushing toward his grandparents' house, where his father and uncle grew up. Uncle Ben would point it out whenever they passed it on the drive back from the airport, the white-slatted two-story unit with a big tree stump in the front yard.

Peter doesn't have any intention of actually knocking on the door, but his curiosity gets the better of him. A peek from across the street couldn't hurt, maybe from up in a tree, especially if no one saw him, right?

But his fears of being noticed go unfounded when he arrives at the loud house party going on at his grandparents' place, where teenagers are milling about in the driveway leading to the backyard. 

"I guess Bubbie and Zayde are out," he murmurs to himself, thinking of the paternal grandparents he can barely remember. Peter didn't think Uncle Ben was the type to throw parties, but he's also only known him as a responsible adult and parental figure. Now, in 1995, he'd be no older than twenty-one or twenty-two.

Quickly changing into civilian clothes, Peter stuffs his Spidey suit into his backpack and webs it to the top of a tree. No one gives him a second glance as he pushes through the house in his search for any familiar faces. _Beastie Boys_ is blasting, and teenagers in baggy pants are jumping around with Solo cups in hand.

"Far out!" says Peter, throwing high fives at strangers as he wracks his mind for any 90s pop culture references. "Um, rad crib!"

When he asks about Ben Parker, someone points upstairs, and his chest tightens. As he makes his way towards the stairs, Peter decides that if his uncle didn't know who he was, it wouldn't muck anything up in this timeline if he just said hi? If he just saw Uncle Ben alive and happy, just for a moment?

With a deep breath, Peter twists the doorknob to his uncle's childhood room and pushes the door open. 

"Hey, Unc—I mean, Ben?"

Instead of a young Uncle Ben sitting at his desk like he expected, Peter's greeted by a tangle of naked limbs and bedsheets. A girl with long brown hair sits up and gasps, pulling a pillow over herself, and a guy about Peter's age reaches over her protectively.

"Sorry, sorry!" Peter squeaks, immediately pulling the door shut with a slam as he backs away, stumbling.

His face burns with embarrassment to the tip of his ears, and he rushes down the stairs as fast as he can without drawing attention to himself. As he rounds the corner at the bottom of the stairs, he bumps into someone and feels a cold drink spill down the front of his shirt.

“Watch it!” snaps the girl he just collided with. 

"Sorry!" 

Peter is saying that a lot tonight. So much for avoiding unnecessary interactions with people in the past. 

The girl with short dyed-black hair and a silver nose ring squints at him. "Why are you sorry if you're the one that got spilled on?"

"Uh…" Peter isn't sure how he got this stranger mad at him twice in the span of a few minutes. "I'm sorry because I didn't mean to bump into you?" He takes off the wet flannel shirt and ties it around his waist, which actually makes him blend in better. "What's your name?"

Raising a thin dark eyebrow, the girl sniffs at him suspiciously. "Who wants to know?"

"I'm Peter P—uh..." he begins to introduce himself. 

"And who the fuck are you, _Peter_?" she demands, arms crossed.

Peter’s hand freezes in mid-air before he can bring it up to shake her hand. "Uh…"

But then a smile breaks across the girl's face and she starts laughing, and it's so familiar that makes the hairs on Peter's body stand on end. She's laughing _his_ laugh—wide mouthed and toothy, with the same curl of her bottom lip.

"Sorry, you’re just too easy," she sighs. "But you seem alright. I'm Mary Fitzpatrick. Funny shirt, by the way.”

Peter looks down at his t-shirt—the one with two atoms telling each other “I Lost an Electron” and “Are You Positive?"—then back up at the girl, who’s wearing chunky black boots and an oversized flannel shirt over a cropped Nirvana t-shirt and tattered black shorts. 

“Thanks,” he says in a daze, eyeing her heart-shaped face so similar to his own. Could he really be meeting his mom right now? And she seems so cool—in a scary, grungy, gothy way. But his parents weren't supposed to meet until years later, and his mom wasn't from Queens. “So, Mary, are you from around here?”

Mary shakes her head. "My friend and I came down from Buffalo for a Pearl Jam concert tonight, but the show got canceled. Figured we might as well still hang out in the city since we already had our bus tickets."

"My mom was from Buffalo!" Peter exclaims, trying to suppress the excitement bubbling in his stomach. But she can’t know who he really is, so as an afterthought Peter blurts out, "She’s dead, though. My mom."

"Morbid but okay, I can dig that," she replies, wrinkling her nose, and Peter tries his hardest not to mimic the expression, in case he creeps her out. "Sorry about your mom."

He lifts a shoulder. "I was really little."

"Still sucks."

Peter swallows and nods, itching to change the subject. "You said you're here with a friend?"

"Yeah, but she kinda ditched me for some hookup," says Mary. "She's the one from around here, so I don't really know anyone. Was about to leave and check out some tourist traps in Manhattan."

"Manhattan? Psshh, the real New York is right here in Flushing, Queens!" says Peter, waving her off. "In fact, I'll bet you top dollar that you'll even want to settle and start your family here someday."

Mary rolls her eyes. "You're on. Jokes on you, though, I don't even want kids."

"Never?"

"I don't think you can say _never_ about anything," she says, picking at her black nail polish. "Just don't like the idea of getting tied down to a single place or person."

"Not even when you know what you want? When you're certain?" Peter feels like he's had this argument before.

Mary shrugs. "You seem very invested in this idea of commitment, dude."

"I tried to propose to my girlfriend," Peter admits, scratching the back of his head. He had shown up at MJ's doorstep, drunk and still feeling wretched from some fight they had. 

"Tried? I take it you didn't get the answer you were hoping for?"

Peter shakes his head, face glum. "She didn't exactly say _no_. Just that we were still young, it could wait, and that I was being impulsive... But the way I see it, when you know you've found your person, why wait? My parents…" Peter trails off, but Mary nods for him to continue. "My parents got married young, and so did my aunt and uncle, and they didn't get all the time in the world together. It's just, like, why waste anymore time?” 

His mom lifts her shoulders. "I can't imagine ending up with anyone I meet now, at this point in my life. I've barely started living my own life. Maybe your girlfriend just wants some time to be herself first."

"But wouldn't it be nice to share your life with someone you care about?" asks Peter, more rhetorically to the air than to her. Thoughts of MJ's smile and her sarcastic little frown fill his head. He'd do anything to be back in his time right now, just to be with her, despite how he left things. 

"Depends on the person and timing," says Mary, sipping on her beer. "Timing can be everything." 

Just then, whooping loudly, a group of jocks shove their way toward the backyard while dragging a skinny guy with glasses along with them. 

“Maybe you’ll think twice about showing up where you don't belong next time, freak,” the leader says to their victim, who’s tripping over his own feet. 

Peter excuses himself and follows after them, rolling up his shirt sleeves. Out back, the jocks have the guy with glasses surrounded, while the leader advances on him with a raised fist. 

Stepping in between them, Peter swiftly catches the bully’s fist and keeps a firm grip on it.

“Are we gonna have a problem?” he asks, glaring at his taller opponent. "Or do you just get off on picking on someone smaller than you?"

“Parker!” shouts someone from the crowd that has gathered around them. Out of habit and instinct, Peter jerks his head over at the same time as the bully. "The keg's kicked!"

“Kinda busy right now!” the bully grits out, returning Peter’s glare as he grinds his fist into Peter's palm.

Peter drops his jaw and his eyes widen. “Are you… Richard Parker?”

That's when Peter sees it, their striking resemblance. Richard is taller and has a squarer jaw than Peter, but they have the same big brown eyes, floppy hair and incredulous expression. 

"Yeah, who the hell are you?"

"I'm Peter. A, uh, friend of Ben's…?" Peter hopes no one probes into his story—or lack thereof—any further. He drops his grip on Richard's fist, and gestures toward his previous target. "Why are you attacking him?"

"Attacking?" Richard shakes out his fist, clenching and unclenching the sore digits. "That egghead Norman was bothering some girls inside. Just because his daddy used to be rich, he thinks he can crash our parties to slum it and pick up an easy date," says Richard, crossing his arms defensively. "I'm the host, so it's my responsibility to clean out the trash."

"You didn't need to gang up on him four to one," says Peter, sternly but non-accusingly.

Richard shrugs abashedly. "Maybe not… but he's such a _schmuck_." At that, he throws a dirty look at Norman, who's leaning against the tree in the front yard and glowering venomously.

"How dare you touch me, you impoverished oaf!" Norman hisses. "You'll regret this one day. And those stuck-up tramps—no one rejects an Osborn!"

Richard gives Peter an 'I told you so' look, but proceeds to extend a hand out to Norman, who eyes it warily before rejecting his offer to help him up.

“Suit yourself,” Richard says, turning back to Peter. “You’ve got a hell of a grip there, bud. You really eat your Wheaties, huh?” 

After watching Norman adjust his glasses and leave with an indignant huff, Peter looks back at Richard. "Eat my what?"

"Nevermind," says Richard, running his fingers through his hair. With his toothy smile and chiseled jaw and chin, he looks like a classic all-american athlete, the kind that schools put on their brochure covers. "You said you know my brother?"

Peter's eyes widen as panic steals across his nerves. He needs to come up with a story, and fast. A mix of the truth or a completely fabricated background? What would be believable but invite the fewest questions? As his mind races, he feels a tap on his shoulder.

"Good job, hall monitor," says Mary, appearing behind Peter with a can of beer. "Sorry, keg's out."

He accepts the drink, amused at the irony of his mom serving him cheap alcohol at a house party, and shrugs. "Not really, Richard's the host. I probably saved him from a lawsuit, though."

"Host or not, Richarld didn't have to make a big scene about it," she says, gesturing at him with her cup. "Typical douche."

"Nothing typical about me, sweetheart, I promise," says Richard, leaning in close to her ear. "And you can call me Rich."

Mary steps back. "You sure you don't go by _Dick_?"

"You can call me anything you'd like," he replies, flashing a charming smile.

"How about asshole?" Mary's shorter than Richard by a head but still looks up at him menacingly. His cheeks flush smittenly, and Peter can hear his father's heart race.

Richard grins. "I'm not usually into that kind of kinky stuff, but for you—"

"No thanks," Mary snaps, looking him up and down. "I'm not interested in boring meatheads trying to check off a type with me."

Richard frowns. "What, like you're so worldly and edgy? Bet you're not even from the city, that you're really an uptight suburban chick who's trying to be a rebel."

A sharp look of cold fury flashes across Mary's face, and she inhales deeply before shouting back at him 

Crap. Peter wraps his arms around his head. This is a disaster. His parents weren't supposed to meet yet, not until after graduating from college. Aunt May said they were scientists who met on the job, fell in love, and eloped before having a wedding—they were _that_ crazy about each other.

But because of Peter's meddling, Mary Fitzpatrick and Richard Parker met a few years too soon in this timeline—before they were ready, before they were the better versions of themselves that the other could stand, and even love. 

Instead, his dad is still an immature college jock who's used to getting his way through his charm and looks, and his mom is kind of a judgemental grunge-scenester who won't look past appearances.

Is that what happened to him and MJ? Did they meet too soon, get together too young? Maybe she's worried they can't grow together. But she's seen him through some of the hardest times in his life, and he can't imagine spending the rest of it with anyone else.

Mary eventually storms off, muttering about how she should have left earlier and gone sightseeing in Manhattan, and meet interesting people instead of wasting her night at a crappy house party in the suburbs.

By all accounts he was told, his parents were madly in love. Their fiery and whirlwind romance was always part of the stories his aunt and uncle told about them, the workplace flirtation that rapidly escalated into an elopement while they were traveling on a field assignment.

"Your father was as brash and impatient as your uncle was level-headed and patient," Aunt May would say. "And your mom was probably the only woman who could give Richard Parker a taste of his own medicine."

So how is he supposed to get Mary and Richard to fall 'madly in love' with each other when they can't stand even being in the same room together? What if his screw up leaves this timeline without a Peter Parker in the future, without Spider-Man? Will he return to a present in which he never existed?

It's definitely not what Tony had in mind about "keeping a low profile" and "don't fuck anything up and get your ass back here as soon as you're done". But he has to fix the mess he created, so Peter finds his mom before she leaves the party.

"He's just a big dumb hunk," she huffs when Peter asks her what she thought of his father.

"Who's also a senior at ESU and on academic and athletic scholarships, so he's got both brains and brawn!" says Peter, rocking on his heels and trying to remember everything Aunt May and Uncle Ben told him about his father. "He's also a biochemistry major that knows jiu-jitsu. He also likes dogs, and I think he..."

"Look, he sounds great, but I just don't go for guys like him, okay?" Mary tucks her short hair behind her ear. "The thing with picture-perfect jocks like him is that they won't keep an open mind because they think they've already figured everything out."

“He was pretty open about hearing me out and calling a truce with that Norman guy earlier," says Peter. "Why don’t you give him a chance? He might surprise you.”

“Why? Just because he looks like a tall, dark-haired Jonathan Taylor Thomas?”

Peter furrows his brows. “Does that mean you think he’s attractive or not attractive?”

Mary shrugs, but her cheeks visibly flush against her pale skin. "He's only conventionally attractive."

Peter nods, trying not to grin. "Does that mean you'll maybe consider giving Richard a shot? Just a conventional one, of course, no special allowances?"

Mary fights a smile tugging at her lips. "Maybe. If he cuts it out with the macho man thing."

Peter knows he shouldn't judge people based on the worst parts of them—when he's out patrolling, he's usually running into people on their worst day, at their most desperate or vulnerable, so he understands this deep down. 

He also understands that he doesn’t know the man that Richard will become as well as he knows Tony. That made it easier for Peter to cut young Tony some slack, despite how obnoxious and brash he can be.

So as much as he may not like some parts of Richard Parker, Peter knows he needs to have faith in his father and his ability to become a better person. Uncle Ben had taught him about seeing the best in people, even if it's not readily apparent in the moment, and he must have thought that about his own little brother.

"So, you know my friend Mary over there?" he asks, guiding his father's gaze toward her.

Richard raises an eyebrow. "You mean the grunge-goth chick who hates my guts?"

Peter nods, undeterred. "I think she's into you, man."

His father laughs. "Did you forget when she chewed my head off earlier?"

"Well, you know, maybe that's her way of flirting? To see if you're up for the challenge?"

Richard Parker knits his brows in concentration and his jaw ticks from the effort, giving him a serious but debonair demeanor, like James Bond trying to solve a puzzle. "You really think so? I didn't think a girl like her would be into someone like me."

Peter cocks his head. "What do you mean? Why wouldn't she like you?"

His father shrugs. "She's probably into deep philosophy and dark poetry and music I've never heard of. I'm just… I'm just a guy from Queens. Nothing special."

"You never know, she might be into that," says Peter patting his dad reassuringly on the shoulder. "And maybe she'll tell you about the music she's into if you ask?"

"I dunno, dude," Richard scratches the back of his neck shyly, and the confident athlete looks like a Parker again. "I've never tried to get with a girl like that before. She's hot, in a scary way. But I don't think my usual moves are gonna fly with her."

"Just gotta rely on that old Parker charm," Peter assures him. "That is, be honest with her and treat her with respect? Make her laugh, too."

"You sound like my big brother," Richard scoffs, but he's grinning, and Peter smiles back.

"Well, whatever Ben's doing seems to be working out for him," replies Peter, face pink. His father laughs.

"Did you walk in on him with his girlfriend? Don't worry, they're always at it. He’s been with May basically forever now, probably gonna propose as soon as he gets his union card." Richard looks almost wistful about the idea, and turns back to Peter with his jaw set with determination. "So, what do I do about Mary?"

"Show her that you're listening to her, that you're interested in what she's interested in," Peter explains, clapping a hand around his dad's neck as they lean their heads in together conspiratorially. "Ask her about herself. Maybe she's as self-conscious about her weirdness as you are about your… boringness.” 

"Thanks," Richard says dryly. "What do I ask her about? I usually just tell a girl that I think she's pretty and it's a done deal."

"Really? Wow. Why didn't those genes pass down?"

"Huh?"

"Nevermind," says Peter, shaking his head. "Why don't you ask Mary stuff like, her favorite book or what's her favorite murder?"

"Murder?" Richard looks skeptical.

"Or musician, or anything. I mean, anything you actually want to know about her?"

“I’d like to know if she's hiding any tattoos under all that flannel and frowning."

Peter makes a face. “Ugh, gross!” 

Richard looks more scandalized than Peter does. “What? You don’t think Mary is a hottie?”

Peter coughs. "All that matters is that you think so. Listen, Rich, if you do not ask Mary out, then I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life."

A musical ringtone goes off in his pocket, and Peter pulls out the boxy Nokia cellphone and puts it up to his ear.

"Petey-o, you gotta get your butt back here soon, the car's almost ready!" shouts Tony.

"Awesome! Yup, I'll be back as soon as I can," he replies. "I just gotta take care of something real quick." 

"Fine. I've only fixed a time traveling car in under forty-eight hours, but go ahead, take your sweet time," Tony says sarcastically. "You _are_ keeping a low profile, right, kiddo? No one's seen you or interacted with you?"

Peter purses his lips into a tight line, as if that will keep him from blurting out the truth, that he's done a lot more than that. His face is heating up, temperature rising with his anxiety levels.

"Pete! You can't do shit like that, time travel one oh one!" Tony shouts over the phone.

"Well, I've already changed stuff by being here, so what's one more thing?" Peter rationalizes.

"What's one more—what's one more?!" Peter hears Tony inhale sharply over the receiver. "Just… get back to my lab before you screw up _my_ timeline anymore than you already have!"

"That's what I'm trying to do!"

"You know what? I'm not gonna ask. Maybe the less I know, the better. Just try not to, I dunno, instigate a premature apocalypse, alright?"

"No promises," says Peter, hanging up with a click, and heads back to the party. 

He can't leave things with his parents like that—what if he never exists in this timeline, and there's no Spider-Man? Would this world be better or worse off? Would he ever know?

Then he sees the top of Richard's head across the room, and as he gets closer he can just make out Mary's dark bob in between the crowd. With his super hearing, Peter picks up bits of their conversation, which sounds heated and confrontational.

Shit, shit—he left them alone for fifteen minutes and his parents still managed to find each other and start yelling at each other already. Maybe he screwed up their chances for good in this timeline; they met too soon and won't be able to get over a bad first impression.

But the closer Peter gets to them, the more their bickering starts to sound an awful lot like flirting, as they fight over the movie GoldenEye, which they both like but for different reasons—which was the actual point of contention.

"You would make a hot Bond girl," says Richard.

"Pfft!" Mary flicks him on the nose and puts her hands on her hips. "I'll be 007. You can be the hot Bond girl."

"So you admit it," says Richard, shifting closer to her, "you think I'd make a hot Bond girl?" 

Mary exhales in mock exasperation. "You are amazingly self-assured, has anyone ever told you that?"

"I tell myself that every day, actually," Richard smirks, leaning in closer to her.*

Their eyes lock and the tenuous ease of their banter freezes as the palpable tension between them rises, almost acknowledged. 

"I bet you do," she says so softly Peter almost doesn't catch it. 

"So, uh…" Richard scratches the back of his neck, unable to keep his eyes off Mary but unsure of what to say. "What's um, your favorite murder?"

Mary raises an eyebrow at him, and her dark lips curl into a slow smile. "Richard Parker, you're full of surprises."

As his parents keep talking and drinking, they start finding excuses to touch each other. Mary playfully smacks Richard's chest and rolls her eyes, and he leans in close to tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her something. She shakes her head, laughing, and he nudges her shoulder with his.

Peter's about to leave his parents to it and make his way back to Stark Tower, when he hears Mary call out to him.

"So, I think I'm going to stay here tonight," says Mary. "It's getting pretty late."

Peter raises his eyebrows. "Here? With Richard?"

Mary nods, barely hiding her smile. "He said he'd set up his parents room for me, and take me to the bus station tomorrow morning, so I can catch my bus back up to Buffalo."

Grinning, Peter nods. "He's not so bad after all?"

"Jury's still out on that one," she replies, grey eyes twinkling. 

Richard comes up behind her and greets Peter warmly, and says, "George Lincoln Rockwell."

"Huh?" Peter gives his father a perplexed look.

"Her favorite assassination," Richard clarifies. "Fitz here prefers assassinations over murders. Killing to make a statement over… what'd you call it? Pathetic personal vendettas of violence?"

Mary nods. "Plus Nazi hunting would be my favorite sport, if I did sports."

Peter's eyes go round as he nods slowly at his parents. "I'm glad you guys worked that one out." 

And he means it—turns out his parents didn't really need his interference at all. Maybe things do work out on their own sometimes, or even better when he's not trying to force it to work out. Maybe that's what MJ meant about just letting the future happen and taking things as they come, instead of trying to control it and rush it.

"Peter, will we ever see you again?" Mary asks, threading her fingers through Richard's when he rests his hand on her shoulder.

"I guarantee it," replies Peter, smiling sadly. He salutes them and turns to leave.

-*-

Adjusting his grip on the steering wheel, Peter exhales and prepares himself to blast through time in the sleek vehicle, feeling more hopeful than he has since before his bungled proposal to MJ. If his parents could figure it out after he mucked things up, then maybe he and MJ could, too. 

Perhaps his mom was right, timing mattered—but so does choice, he thinks. The choice to have faith in the other person and in them both as a couple, and the choice to put in the work together. He'll never really know if destiny or fate exist, if the universe tends toward convergence or if there are such things as fixed points through the multiverse. But he knows with certainty how he feels about MJ, and he knows that he'll wait for her as long as he needs to.

“If my calculations are correct, which, obviously, they are,” says Tony, “when this baby hits sixty-nine miles-per-hour... you're gonna see some serious shit." 

"Sixty-nine?"

"Heh," Tony chuckles, inputting some final commands into his dashboard. His eyes are alight with a maniacal excitement that Peter instantly recognizes, no matter how old or which version of Tony he is—it’s the thrill of scientific discovery, of inventing and doing something that’s never been done before. "Tell the future hi for me, and to watch out because Tony Stark's figured out how to build a Flux Capacitor!"

"What about all that talk about screwing up future events? The space-time continuum?" Peter shouts through the car window.

"Well, I figured, what the hell, " Tony shrugs. "Who knows if anything ever ends up better or worse than they could've been?"

The lights in the lab shimmer and shake, blurring as the car picks up speed along the racetrack in Tony's lab, and the air ripples as the dimensional veil stretches and thins out around the Audi-lorean.

"Thanks for everything, Tony!" Peter calls out as he feels space and time squeeze around him.

“See you later, kid.”


End file.
